It’s time to light up the Campfire

Another Memorial Day weekend ... another Campfire at Club Passim. The annual event has been around for almost two decades, and continues to be one of the most popular offerings at the Cambridge venue.

It kicks off from 6 p.m. until midnight on Friday, May 26, then runs from noon until midnight over the following three days, featuring performances by some well-known Passim regulars, by some first-timers and by others who are in the midst of rising up through the ranks.

Campfire’s roots go back to the mid-1990s and a series called Songwriters in the Square, which was created by Matt Smith, who is now the managing director at Passim.

“The idea there was to have a songwriters in the round show,” said Smith. “We would take three or four folks that we thought were great, but probably couldn’t pull a full audience of their own, but would have different enough audiences so that they could each bring in enough people to make it a good house. That would happen every couple of months. Campfire was an idea to take that concept and explode it out over a dead weekend, at first on Labor Day, and now on both Labor Day and Memorial Day.”

This year’s happening consists of 42 sets, running from 45 minutes to an hour, spread out over the four days. Some feature solo performers, others showcase bands, still others, following in the tradition of Songwriters in the Square, have a group of different artists onstage, taking turns at doing songs, often joining in with each other.

The order of the acts was set by the end of March, but the planning of the whole shebang started a lot earlier.

“I will ask various members of the music community, whose ears I trust, both local and national, who’s out there that I should be paying attention to?” said Smith. “Then I’ll check them out. Also, every day of the year, I get emails from people who want to play at Passim. But some of them are folks that aren’t known, so they’re not necessarily people I can book. When I do get those emails I check them out online and I keep a list of people I might put on my Campfire list.

“We got this year’s performance schedule set toward the end of March,” he added. “We sent out invitations to artists in late-February or early-March. We contact people and say we’d love you to come and play this thing; give us your widest availability over these four days. Then we chart it out and build from there. Sometimes it’s purely what availability dictates, but we always try to put together rounds that we think are going to spark some magic.”

It constantly turns out to be a treat for adventurous audiences, as well as a big opportunity for new and developing acts.

“We try to give performers a solid audience to play for, and build them towards their own headline shows,” explained Smith. “There are a lot of people who are there to see a specific act, and they might get there a little bit before, or stay a little bit after. But that’s the whole idea: that you’re not just going to see the act that you came to see, you’ll also see some other stuff that will hopefully get you turned on to a new thing.”

Of course, with only 110 seats in the club, it’s often full at peak periods of Campfire, but outside speakers are always turned on for those waiting in line to get in. Some have been known to bring along beach chairs. And the wait is worth it.

“It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet,” said Smith. “It’s low cost and you get a lot of incredibly talented performers. And it’s not just people who are brand new to the scene. There’s also a lot of people that are already headliners who do this just because they love doing it. Or they might not be doing their usual thing; they could be experimenting and trying something else. There’s always something interesting happening.”

Campfire runs from 6 p.m. until midnight on May 26, and from noon until midnight on May 27, 28, and 29 at Club Passim in Cambridge. One-day tickets are $10. Weekend passes are $25. For a complete list of acts and performance times, visit http://passim.org/campfireschedule.